


endspiel

by goeasyvicar



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: (it's not fluff though i promise), (kind of? depends on your definition i guess), Angst, During Canon, F/M, POV First Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29694270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goeasyvicar/pseuds/goeasyvicar
Summary: Musings of a certain Soviet grandmaster on the matter of a certain American prodigy.
Relationships: Vasily Borgov/Beth Harmon, Vasily Borgov/Vasily Borgov's Wife
Comments: 15
Kudos: 21





	endspiel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [disagio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disagio/gifts).



> don't know if people still write in first person but i wanted to look at him from a slightly different side. not that this side hasn't been looked at before but you know. you get it. anyway, this is for your crimes, my dear. i'm not really sure if this was what you meant when you asked for borgov's pov but it's what you're getting. the rating choice might also be questionable but better safe than sorry. 
> 
> some other notes:  
> \- while english is hardly my acquaintance, let alone my friend, all of the, uh, tense choices are deliberate to create a sort of muddled narrative as it's more of a stream of thoughts than a structured story  
> \- despite the name i've given to mrs borgov here, it's **for once** not connected to any of my previous fics  
> \- also highly recommend [this wonderful piece](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjj0tTjH14s&list=OLAK5uy_nl5aeZaYqWuW8IpxC_LxQORsQG4I8xmUk&index=8) (and also maybe 'rusalka rusalka' by the decemberists which would probably be the most classic choice within the fandom) as a sort of soundtrack just to feel where this horrible horrible man is mentally

I saw the Aqueducts of Segovia for the first time today. The weather here is fiercer than we're used to and Galina doesn't like the heat, so I went to see it in as much solitude as I'm allowed. It's a long way from Palma where I'm, technically speaking, not even supposed to be at this time of year but the sights are worth it. A great big thing of old stone, nearly thirty metres in height, living and breathing history but surrounded by various shops and eateries in an unmistakably ordinary human way. Locals walk all around it without looking, as if it's not even there. A fascinating notion, don't you think? To be so well-known as a constant concept that most people can't even see who you are anymore. Almost like an optical illusion.

I went through them as well - hard to resist an impulse to entangle yourself with antiquity, to try to give yourself more meaning than you were given at the point of your creation. It was just before the golden hour when I got there, so the lighting must've been particularly fetching for photographers. Fortunately, there were none. No one was there to mock me as I walked through the long thin shadows, run-down languid tentacles, and back into the sun. I've discovered that ephemeral darkness felt more welcoming than the light. A peculiar sensation, I must say, but, then again, I've become more prone to poesy. I know you would scold me for this uncharacteristic lyricism. In a way, I'm grateful you will never hear a word of it as you must see me pitiful already. Nevertheless, it made me think of you.

 _Liza._ So many of us have adopted it without your permission and yet it feels so much more fitting than _Elizabeth._ So fluid and yet so sharp - exactly right. I stand in the patch of sunlight between the fissured columns and remind myself of that time I first saw you face to face, in the flesh. I've read the insubstantial file they've prepared on you, went over your games, looked at the picture but the portrait was still incomplete. The Methuen girl in the photograph, obedient but with a silently challenging stare, looked like a chess piece herself, though I couldn't quite decide which one. A little warrior nonetheless. I might've even called you that after Sharipov's snide remark about your developing predilection - my first _inaccuracy_ in hindsight. Then I sensed that unwavering gaze on the back of my head. That version of you, the one that met me at the table, a flimsy film of defiance disguising a trembling heart, wasn't that much different. So reckless, so unprepared, wrapped in clothes, in hair, in makeup, in mannerisms that didn't fit in desperate hopes of appearing older than you were. In the end you didn't present much challenge on the board and so I defeated you. A thin delicate hand hastily flying over the black and white to knock the main piece over, fair skin reddening with frustration and embarrassment, and those eyes, enormous and glistening. It wasn't pure ire exactly, was it, Liza? A fiery mixture of anger at the world, at me, at yourself, and genuine fear. You stormed off, into the cold embrace of your mother, but the eyes never left. I felt them on me days and days after the tournament, thread-like damp tendrils wrapping themselves about my fingers so I would drag my pieces into the squares where you would put them. I didn't think about it then but you burrowed your way into me already.

I step forward and into the shadow again. You looked so different as a Parisienne. Blossoms of expertise atop thorny stems of confidence tied up neatly with a ribbon of style _(you would laugh and roll your eyes)._ Your whole demeanour was new but not completely. You still wanted more than anything to beat me and to prove that you were worth the commotion around you - as a player, as a woman, as a person of your age and descent. They wanted more than anything to tear you apart, your fresh blood staining the perfect mint green of your dress. I wanted more than anything to finally see how much you were capable of. When you walked into the hall, however, dazed by the flashes and soaked through with sickly-sweet perfume and someone else's desire, I knew that only one of us will come out victorious but it won't be me and it certainly won't be you. You cried, regret, exhaustion, loneliness and yes, perhaps that same fear spilling out of you, and suddenly I felt more furious than ever before. A shaking little thing entangled in the barbed wire of your own making, and they all just watched. I watched too, though wishing I could reach over the board and touch you, ground you, remind you of your anchors - I knew you won't bite my hand off no matter how much you wanted to do it before. Galina watched us both and, despite not looking, despite the fact that she never mentioned it out loud, I knew it. For once in my life I didn't want to win but you let me anyway. I went to bed with my head full of you but she put her lips to mine and drank it all patiently, grateful for the way I loved her that night. I woke up with a bitter taste in my mouth wondering if you made it back safely or if they waylaid you at the airport and hollowed you out.

I feel the golden light clawing its way under my eyelids. Moscow was dreary at that time of year but I didn't see it as I knew you were going to beat me. You created quite the spectacle with your performance at the Invitational, carved the unfinished sides of yourself, smoothed them to become a queen among pawns. I do remember speculating how you imagined me on the board of your life but even then I knew it to be inexcusably self-centred. Thankfully, you brought me right back to normality and in the most graceful way, too. I felt the pain of my teeth falling out as you bashed my head in on the squares but I wanted to smile. I felt free. Luchenko said - do you remember Luchenko? - that giving you that king was _a mistake,_ that it could've been misinterpreted by the press, by your minder, by you, by my wife. I couldn't even try to bring myself to care. Standing on a roof of a skyscraper, toying with the concept of gravity, is entertaining and even pleasant for one's ego but it gets cold exceptionally fast. When I wrapped my arms around you it almost burned and yet I wanted to know how it would feel to slither even closer. A completely selfish, pathetic desire, I'm aware of that now _("a bit too late for that, old man" - that's what you'd probably say)._ Sadly, not because you rejected my laughable advances that evening. God, the face you made. You couldn't have imagined your lifelong omnipresent opponent, shrouded in secrecy of the union and my own phobia of showing weakness, being yet another man with wishes like everyone else's. Maybe you just didn't want to imagine it, the reflection of light off of my wedding ring blinding you in the most unsavoury manner. Maybe you just wanted to punch me in the face - I wouldn't blame you. I do hope, though, that you know it wasn't exactly that. You do know that now, don't you, Liza?

 _"Isn't this what you wanted?"_ You asked me that when we met in Lugano that same year, barely a month after Moscow, already undoing the pearlescent buttons of your blouse and my entire self. I remember making an effort to appear shocked by such straightforwardness. I remember seeing how those perfect black lines above your eyes were contrasted by the dark shadows under them and feeling disgusted by my own body responding not to my ideals but to your actions. You didn't need me then nor did you physically want me. You wanted to be wanted, loved, held, crushed, fucked, destroyed - whatever would make you feel anything but tired, whatever would numb the sensation of their feelers draining you of your life from the inside without resorting to the pills. I should've known. I think I knew. I fell down the spiralling staircase anyway. I returned to my room not even an hour later and couldn't hold the sick as I thought of my wife. My good, acquiescent, dutiful wife waiting for me in our bed. I wanted to hurt myself in a way that she never would, the stoic and flawless image of me wagging its faded grey finger at me from the paper the same way my father did all those years ago. How could someone so pure spend so much of her life on such a worthless, pathetic little man? How could she be so blind? No, no, it was my fault again. I blinded her. I carved out her eyes with a spoon made of lies and obedience and party values and smiles reserved for special occasions. I slipped into bed and held her as tight as I could throughout the night keeping my own eyes firmly shut so I wouldn't see your face in the patterns on the walls.

I quicken my pace as I walk behind the columns. Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark, lightdarklightdarklightdark. San Juan, Palma, Belgrade, Amsterdam (we were almost caught there), Vancouver, then Moscow again, finishing the damned circle where it started three years prior. Can you believe it, Liza, three years? You wouldn't have wanted to spend every day of all three of those years with me, though a small part of me still doubts that. In Belgrade, when I knocked on the door of your room and it opened before you could answer, when I walked in and saw you holding a pill bottle, your hands shaking, tears of hopelessness and despair gathering in your eyes like morning dew, when I held you in my horrible arms instead of pressing you into the mattress and lulled you to sleep, you changed. You started to smile at me. You didn't turn away from me when you were satisfied, you clung to me when I would stand up to leave, you asked me things and told me more. You smiled at others too but it was different. Luchenko said to me - do you remember Luchenko? - he said to me that the fact that I can do certain things doesn't mean that I should. I didn't listen. Instead, I began to envy the walls of the rooms you were in. Something grew in me - a yearning, perhaps - uncomfortably, challenging my corporeal limits, threatening to burst. What an appalling way to describe love, don't you think, Liza? If I were to speak in such terms some five years ago, I'd most likely be sent to a clinic.

I settle in the final dark spot before a set of flat stony stairs. Did I ever tell you Galina found out? The worst thing about it, if I could pick only one, was that it didn't even come as a surprise. I'd never felt as small, insignificant as I did then and I would've much rather walked out of the window than faced her then but it was only ever a matter of time. I asked her if she was going to leave me and she looked at me like I was crazy. She told me true feelings don't disappear that easily, at the snap of one's fingers, and she could take me back after a momentary _blunder._ She could shake some sense into me in a proper Soviet way, smoothen my unevenness, make me lose sight of you and remember what's important in life. She could. When she kisses me, I forget you. I bow to her, asking for forgiveness, and promise to be a better husband, a better father. She believes me and smiles through gritted teeth, through the pain that I could never ever understand. She's a giant, so immense in her power and wisdom that the clouds can't obscure her, and I hold her captive.

When she kisses me, I forget you. I forget you ever even existed in the first place. You, along with those cracks and faults on your perfect porcelain face, the redness of your eyes, the temerity of your play, the sharpness of your tongue, the poison of your presence, the atrocity of your touch. Terrible foreign you. But when I see you again, Liza, I bloom. I open myself up to the searing sun, spread my roots and wrap myself around you like Drosera capensis. The crimson of her scarf, encircling her throat and streaming down her chest and shoulders, is like a wound that I inflicted. It pains me to see her silent and compliant, exactly how a good Russian wife is supposed to be, and I want her to scream until her voice turns hoarse. It pains me more to think that red is dull, washed-out, muted. I long for the red that you are. The red of your fury on the board when you will destroy me at the championship. The red of your whispers when you will tell me things you've never told another. The red of your hair in my fingers, like a handful of crushed seaberry, when you will stand on your knees before me in a way I don't deserve. I long for you. I long for you. I love you. I loathe you. I love you.

I make my way back to the car where the impatient driver counts the money he's going to get from me for such a long wait. My head is in flames - from the general heat, from exhaustion, from thinking of you - but I don't show it. They could never know how deeply I desire to be defeated by you. In many ways, you've already done it.


End file.
